A Series of Beautiful Farewells: A 10th Doctor ShortTrip
by That-Other-Doctor
Summary: Set during the final moments in the life of the Doctor's 10th Incarnation, during which he says goodbye to Susan Foreman, Jamie McCrimmon, Elizabeth Shaw, Harry Sullivan, Vislor Turlough, Perpugilliam Brown, Dorothy "Ace" McShane, and Fitzgerald Kreiner.


_Farewell Ten  
On to eternity_

Desolation was an illusion. Like the passage of time, desolation had the ability to twist perception into accepting the notion that the past, present, and future were inseparable moments of what was and what was yet to come, defined by the empty years of loneliness and hearts-ache stretching away into eternity. Linear time, as he knew far too well, was nothing more than a stubbornly persistent illusion. As was desolation. Reach out a hand in need, and someone would be there. Someone would _always_ be there, even if he had fooled himself into thinking otherwise for the indeterminably long ages that composed the sad symphony of his life.

He had always been one to believe that time had kept him in line, that the unspoken consequences of crossing time had coerced him into obeying what little laws were left after the obliteration of the overseeing Time Lords. Time carried him on rapids with distant shores of centuries flashing by in an instant. He was stuck on the current and unable to pull himself to dry land, unable to establish a foothold, unable to keep himself from being swept away.

Oh, he had tried. He had attempted to save an adventurous, beautiful stowaway from the R101, and in doing so had unleashed a force that had nearly rewritten the history of the universe. He had tried to rescue the personnel of Bowie Base One and preserve the life of Captain Adelaide Brooke . . . but had faced those terrible, terrible consequences in due course. Like the nature of the universe in all of its infinite complexity, time had a way of sorting itself out, despite his best intentions.

Now . . . Time had left him behind. Time hadn't cared a fig for him as the days went by and slowly but surely everyone left him, or were taken from him in the brutalist manner possible. Time had passed by, unobtrusively and uninterested, as he had stumbled back into the TARDIS after leaving the Naismith mansion, and allowed himself to be destroyed by the radiation coursing through his veins.

He did not want to be alone. Whether out of a defiance to time's inexorable passage or out of the childlike desire for comfort, the Doctor needed to see _them_ again. He needed to see them _all_ again, before his final time came, and his bell tolled its last. Desolation was an illusion. He may have been walking in eternity alone, but he was far from the loneliest creature in the universe.

Reach out a hand in need, and someone would be there. Someone would _always_ be there.

* * *

_The fates be with you  
On to eternity_

London was a city of ash. The decimated remnants of buildings stood wreathed in shadow, and the street was silent save for the melancholy moan of the wind as it mourned the forgotten memories of the dead. Even after so long, the smell of energy weapons permeated the bitter air.

Flakes of dirty alabaster alighted on the Doctor's coat and on the tips of his sharp hair. He walked to a lot on the East Side, a small area bordered by trash buried under slushy snow. When he reached a square indentation where his own TARDIS had once stood, very long ago in the wake of battle and on the eve of his first goodbye, the Doctor was cloaked in the white ash. The ground beneath his trainers was stiff with cold, crusted with a fine film of frost. Nevertheless, life abounded in the dead wasteland of that lot. A tangle of larkspurs, bright purple even in the gloom, cast a friendly light over the forgotten, cracked pavement. The Doctor gave a wan smile as he parted the blooms, to see the flimsy letter he'd known he'd find buried amongst the stems and away from the public eye.

The letter, wet and soggy from the snow, was addressed to him: his secret name ran off the stationary like teardrops. He opened it, read it quickly but thoroughly, and then pocketed it with a sigh . . .

_". . . sometimes, we do not cherish what we have have until it is gone. Sometimes, we take those we love for granted, and then they leave without us having said everything we needed to say. Not everyone has a time machine to go back and try again. Not all mistakes can be undone, and not all wishes can be fulfilled with a touch of a fast return switch. Linear time forces us to take each day in its stride, and to live for the future rather than dwell on the past. When you cannot exist in any time, in any place, your own time and place becomes so important, and so precious. I am trying to rebuild my own future, to establish roots of my own, and that gives me purpose. It gives me peace, and with David, it gives me happiness."_

"Happy Christmas, Susan," said the Doctor sadly.

* * *

_Farewell Ten  
The fates be with you_

His boot caught in a rabbit hole, and he pitched forward into the grass. His ankle shrieked in agony. He tried to lurch to his feet, but a lance of pain shot up his calf and sent him plunging once more onto the frosty heather. Mud and snow plastered his face, blinding him. Heart pumping in his breast, mind blank with abject terror, he scrabbled forward on his elbows and tried to get away from the redcoat lieutenant eating up the ground behind him. Bullets riddled the slag on either side of him, throwing dirt and grim into his face and further obscuring his already blurry eyesight. Tears of frustration pricked his eyes, but Jamie McCrimmon's pride was too resolute to allow them to fall.

Despairingly, he felt a boot in the small of his back. The heal dug into his spine, stopping him from trying to move any further across the heather. Something cracked, and a livid fury coursed through Jamie's veins when he realized the lieutenant had snapped his wooden pipes clean in half.

"Going somewhere, Schemie?" sneered the Britisher with unveiled contempt.

"Algernon Ffinch," growled Jamie, "brae enough tae shoot a lad in th' back? Aam impressed!"

He felt the sharp edge of a bayonet against the base of his neck. The weapon prevented Jamie from turning his head, from looking his murderer in the eye and dying with a glint of steel still in his gaze.

Jamie smirked. "Kill me then. Better tae die a McCrimmon than a slave a yer British Sassenachs!"

He couldn't see, but he could feel Ffinch aiming, feel the heat on the back of his head. Jamie did not close his eyes. He would die a McCrimmon. He would die a child of Scotland.

He heard a strangled cry of alarm, and suddenly the weight was lifted from his back. Jamie took advantage of the opportunity. He ignored the sharp pain in his ankle and soared to his feet, drawing his dirk from its scabbard and slicing it in an arc until it pointed menacingly at the stranger standing behind him. Lieutenant Ffinch was sprawled on the ground, his coat blood-red against the dirt and snow.

The newcomer stood over the unconscious body. The man was tall and skinny. He wore strange clothing and his hair was as prickly as a thistle bush. He had wide, sad eyes, but his angular features were crinkled into an amused but contrastingly melancholy smile.

"Who're ye, then?" demanded Jamie, his fist tight around the handle of his dirk.

The stranger did not answer, but he inclined his head towards the north. Jamie was loathe to take his eyes off of the tall man, but the sound of drums drew his gaze to the hillock beyond the edge of the moor. Ranks of red-coated men marched towards Inverness, row upon row of British soldiers lined up like the stones of the King's Causeway. Jamie blanched, his eyes darting between the stranger and the men drawing closer.

The man whispered, "Run."

Jamie sheathed his dirk. He bolted back to where the rest of Clan McLaren lay in ambush, kilt and red tartan flying. The memory of the stranger who had saved his life faded into obscure memory at the prospect of hundreds of approaching Redcoats bearing down upon himself and his kin. Jamie did not look back.

"He won't stop running for a very long time," murmured the Doctor.

* * *

_Oh, blessed he  
Who brought us peace_

"I'm going to grab a cuppa, love. Care for one?"

Elizabeth Shaw barely glanced up from the chessboard, her mind immersed in the game. A single pawn had been moved, but it was enough to snag her attention as she planned ten moves ahead of the first advancement on White's part. She murmured something unintelligible from under her breath at the question.

Patricia Haggard arched an eyebrow. "Beg pardon?"

"Hmm? Oh . . . no, thank you, Patty. I'm quite all right."

"I can see that," muttered Haggard, "one would think you were single-handedly planning the Battle of Agincourt!"

"I don't think history could handle _that_ particular possibility, Patty."

"I wouldn't put it past you, Liz. I really wouldn't put it past you."

As Patricia left to put the kettle on, Liz allowed herself a small smile. She knew she took the game of chess far too seriously for most people's taste, but Patty could always be relied on to indulge her erstwhile P.R.O.B.E. colleague.

The marble chessboard gleamed in the early afternoon sunshine. Liz considered Patty's move: the pawn in front of White king's knight. She was about to swing her own queen's knight around to square F6 when a cockney voice piped up,

"Move your queen's pawn to E5."

Liz's hazel eyes darted upward in alarm. A skinny man with spiky hair and a face one could use to open an envelope stared back at her with mock innocence.

"Who on Earth are you?" she asked warily.

He pointed to the ornate chessboard, and Liz noted that he had avoided answering her question. He said again, "Move your queen's pawn to E5."

Liz crossed her arms and blew a strand of her auburn hair out of her face, raking her gaze over the newcomer with the full measure of her scientific scrutiny. The man was playing the fool, with his wide eyes and overeager enthusiasm, but something about his manner and the way in which he held himself hinted that he was not a man to be trifled with. He seemed . . . old. And sad. Sad and old.

"Why would I want to do that?" Liz swept her hand over the chessboard, giving the stranger his satisfaction before Patty returned and raised hell over his intrustion. She wanted to enjoy her quiet afternoon while it lasted.

"Patricia Haggard already moved the pawn in front of her king's knight to square G4," he explained gently, "if you move your queen's pawn to E5, you open up your bishop to take the square at H4 and position itself in a check position in two moves."

Liz frowned, intrigued despite herself. "But the White pawn on F2 is still in position, the one in front of Patty's bishop and diagonal from her king. It will prevent my bishop from putting her king in check."

The stranger's deep russet eyes twinkled like stars in the nighttime sky. He was, Liz decided, exceptionally good-looking in a bookish, inquisitive sort of way. But she was playing chess, and as such, was unlikely to notice such things.

He pointed out, "Ah . . . but! But, consider, Dr. Shaw . . . you can move your queen in a diagonal path to F6 and _then_ shoot it right up to F2, snatching "Patty's" pawn and putting her king into checkmate. She takes your queen with her king, and you take her king with your strategically placed bishop. Game, set, match in five moves."

Liz arched her eyebrows. "That is a rather basic checkmate strategy, if you don't mind my saying so."

"But had it occurred to you?"

She frowned again, and felt the careworn age lines of her face deepen. "No, I suppose it didn't."

"Then, my dear Liz, it isn't basic at all. Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication."

Her striking gaze drifted from the young man to stare in wonder at the chessboard. The small, carved faces of the pieces seemed to smile back at her like faeries peeking from between the leaves of a holy bush, like something out of _A Midsummer Night's Dream_. They seemed almost magical.

Elizabeth Shaw's eyes widened in sudden alarm. She realized that she had never told the stranger her name! She whirled around to confront him, to demand an explanation for his unannounced intrusion.

"Excuse me, young man—"

But he was gone.

* * *

_Farewell Ten  
Lay down your burden_

The Doctor closed the TARDIS door, locking himself within the hushed ambience of his home. He was alone again in the dark and the silence. The final curtain was sweeping over the stage, the orchestra was playing the final crescendo of his song. The note was low and sorrowful and nostalgic for happier times long-since gone.

The Doctor placed one hand on the console, and the other between his hearts. He winced as a fire burned deep within the confines of his chest. The radiation was slowly but surely taking its toll, destroying him from the inside out, tearing his nervous system apart neuron from neuron. Time was an illusion, and yet . . . his was steadily running out.

With the sound of elephantine groaning and the wrenching howl of rusty machinery, the TARDIS materialized on a footpath leading up to a small, unremarkable English cottage. The edifice was nestled in the shade of a few coniferous trees. The tidy front yard was bordered by a white picket fence whose vinyl finish gleamed in the midmorning sun. The Doctor left the TARDIS and was greeted by the sound of a dog barking within the cream-sided, blue-shuttered house. His trainers crunched on the gravel as he strolled down the footpath, enjoying the shade of the trees and the cheerful twittering of the birds. He passed a small but serviceable red car parked neatly in the drive and an equally-red mailbox with the name _Sullivan_ scrawled hurriedly across the side in nondescript handwriting. The Doctor couldn't help but smile.

He lay a hand on the box. The metal was hot from resting in the summer sun. The thing was stuffed with rain-soaked newspapers and old postcards. The Doctor took a small slip of paper from the depths of his trench coat pocket. It was dusty, and stained with the rings of old cups of tea, but the Time Lord's handwriting was still legible.

The Doctor stuck the paper to the top of the mailbox with a roll of sticky tape. Even someone as myopic as Harry Sullivan wouldn't be able to miss it, nor the message stamped across it in bright red sharpie.

_13 Bannerman Road, London  
_

* * *

_We will remember you  
Forever more_

A shortish, dour man with a vacant expression and a thinning hairline brushed within an inch of its pitiful life bowed respectfully as he entered the royal suite of the Ohwrotco continental hospital. "Your Highness?"

"_What?!_"

The man cleared his throat nervously. "There's . . . ah . . . a visitor for you."

There was an old, decrepit centenarian laying stiffly in the sole hospital bed, multiple IV drips and suction-cups plastered across his gaunt face. He laughed bitterly, "A visitor? I haven't had a visitor in five years, Arias. What could have possibly changed on the eve of my death? Have some lost and forgotten family members decided to pry the last of my fortune from my cold, dead hands?"

Arias flinched at his master's churlishness. The last few years of solitude had sharpened the dying man's cynicism to fine point. "No, your Highness. There is a stranger in the hospital lobby, but he is not from the continent of Ohwrotco. In fact, to get past security, he showed the chief of the chancellery guard an identification paper claiming he was the Federation ambassador from Draconia! This man says he is a friend, your Highness,"

The old man snorted. His eyes, unlike the rest of his body, were alert and shone with a ridiculous shade of sky blue. Any life that resided in his frail frame resided in his eyes. "I don't have any friends, Arias."

"Thank you very much," muttered the manservant under his breath.

"You don't count."

Arias harrumphed, but continued through his indignation, "Nevertheless, your Highness, this man claims to be a friend. A doctor of . . . ambassadoring sorts. Of course, I need to confirm his identification. A weapons search as well as passport verification need to be cleared with the immigration committee—"

The old man sat bolt upright in bed, his eyes huge and owl-like in his emaciated skull. "A _doctor?_"

"Er . . . yes, your Highness. As I said, his passport and identification chip need to be—"

"Never mind all that confounded bowing and scraping, Arias! Send him in this instant! I can't believe you left him out there twiddling his thumbs like a bored schoolboy!"

Arias looked utterly exasperated. "It _is_ court policy, your Highness. Your own policy, at that."

"I'm the _k__ing_, Arias. When I say send the Doctor in, I mean _send the Doctor in!_"

Arias shook his head. He had known the king for a long time, since his majesty's return from his exile to the Sol system, and Arias had always considered him a levelheaded, albeit cold and occasionally dispassionate ruler. He had never seen the king this excited about anything before. Nevertheless, despite his bemusement, Arias gestured for the chancellery guard to allow the visitor entrance.

The stranger looked deceivingly like a Trion: not of Ohrotco, but perhaps from one of the sister continents. He had the wiry build of most of the people living in the planet's low gravity. He had wide eyes and high-set cheekbones that gave him an imperious yet curiously childlike appearance. He couldn't have been more than 40 years old at the very most, but his bony shoulders were hunched as if he carried the weight of the world upon them. His face was shadowed in sorrow.

"Hello Turlough," said the Doctor quietly.

The old man arched an eyebrow. Aside from that, the expression painted on his tight, yellowed skin was inscrutable. "You've . . . changed."

"So have you."

"I grew up and I grew old," Turlough snapped bitterly, "it tends to happen to people of a more _linear_ nature. I'm dying, Doctor."

The Time Lord met Vislor Turlough's electric eyes. "So am I."

If Turlough was surprised, he didn't show it. "Is that why you're here? Out of pity? Out of some misplaced sense of empathy?"

"No," said the Doctor, "I needed to see everyone again, with these eyes, one last time. Did you know I met my fifth persona recently?"

"How on Trion could I be expected to know that?!"

The Doctor did not break stride in light of Turlough's irritation. "I was reminded of the importance of treasuring the past. He was brilliant, that other me, all blond hair and celery and crickety cricket stuff. I fell back in love with that version of me."

"Yes," Turlough muttered, "that can happen."

The Doctor hadn't heard him, which was just as well, so far as Turlough was concerned. "So I am visiting everyone, all of my friends, one more time before the end. The TARDIS brought me to this point in your life to say goodbye."

An inkling of sympathy flashed across Turlough's wizened face. "You're not exactly catching me at my best."

"Nor you I, Turlough."

"Ah, but it's not quite the same for you, is it?" Turlough smiled very sadly. He had never been a man for smiling, and the expression was just as alien to him now as it had been in his youth. "We both know that you exist beyond the confines of linear time, Doctor, beyond the mortal coil that tethers me to my inevitable fate. You are a summation of many past and future lives, one man within whom resides the souls of many. You are bigger on the inside, Doctor, like the TARDIS. And like the TARDIS, you never know where or how you're going to end up. There is only one certainty: this isn't the end for you."

The Doctor whispered, "But this part of me will die."

"And you will become a new man. I will become a nothing more than a memory, a legacy for the people of Trion."

"And a legacy for me, Turlough," added the Doctor.

"Perhaps. You must live in order to find out. If, for no other reason, though I know in my heart you have many, live to remember me. Live to remember the lost Prince of Trion."

* * *

_Farewell Ten  
We give you thanks_

Perpugilliam Brown shivered in her thin sweater. The church was chilly, breezy, and empty, save for a few worshippers scattered throughout the nave and the choir singing in front of the east transept. They were rehearsing some sort of a holiday hymn, like a Christmas Carol back on Earth.

"_Vale decem_", they sang, "_ad aeternam . . _."

She didn't know the particulars of the Lokisian's faith, and the Doctor had been more than a little exasperated when she had asked, no, _begged_ to pop inside their temple for some alone time and rest. She had had an urge, and when Peri got her mind on something, it would have taken a whole Roman legion of Doctors to try and convince her to change her mind.

As she muttered meaningless phrases along with the choir, she felt the wooden pew sag underneath her. A guy had taken a seat next to her. Peri rolled her eyes in annoyance, thankful her head was bowed. The entire damn church was empty, and this impudent stranger had to go and sit within a foot of her! Peri opened her mouth to give him a generous piece of her mind.

Her eyes widened and her mouth clanged open. He looked like someone from a GQ magazine: unfairly skinny and a face that could light the deep void of space. He had gravity-defying hair and high, handsome cheekbones. He was dressed a little strange: a weird combination of suit and trench coat and what Peri could have sworn were a pair of Chuck Taylor's. Then again, considering the company she kept, it was probably best to not pass judgement on matters of _haute couture._

"Hi," ventured Peri, trying to be polite while keeping her voice low for the sake of the choir.

The man gave her a impish grin. "'Ello."

Peri couldn't help but smile back. The guy had a cockney accent, like something off of "Oliver Twist" or "Eastenders". It was strange, but oddly comforting, to hear such a colloquially Earth voice so far from the Planet Earth.

"So," she asked before awkwardness could ensue, "are you here for the service?"

The man shook his head. Peri noted with amusement that his hair didn't move. "I'm just here for the peace and quiet. You?"

"Same. I went to mass when I was little, but I was in it for lunch at McDonald's afterwards, you know? I understand the words and I know the psalms, but they've never held any meaning for me."

"I understand. If I may be so bold . . ."

"Yeah?"

The man pointed to her lap. "Your hands are still clasped. And they turned on the central heating a few minutes ago, so you are not still trying to stay warm."

Peri shrugged. "I'm praying."

"But you just said—"

"You don't need to be the Pope to be allowed to pray. Anyone can. And you wanna know a secret?"

He nodded.

"I've met an angel."

The stranger, for some odd reason, shuddered. "So have I, after a fashion. Couldn't bring myself to blink for a month."

"No, really," insisted Peri, who had no idea what the stranger was going on about, "I met an angel named Yy in Heaven on the Planet Sheol. And you wanna know something else? He hears everything. No prayer goes unnoticed. Nobody is ignored."

"Does that mean you believe in Heaven?" asked the man.

Peri had to think for a moment. "I always figured Heaven and Hell were concepts that allowed martyrs, children, and jihadists to sleep soundly at night. It was what quieted the consciences of those who lived in fear of their immortal souls. I travel with a friend, and he's shown me some wonderful things and more than my fair share of terrible things. I came to realize that so many of those terrible things stemmed from someone's desire to appease their God or secure their ticket to Heaven. The way I see it, if Heaven is a place for religious extremists and Hell is reserved for the rest of us, then I wanted no part in any of it."

"Then why are you praying to Yy?"

"Because I like to believe someone besides the Doctor is giving me the time of day," Peri explained, "and . . . I want Yy to know that I haven't forgotten him."

The stranger sat back in the pew in contemplative silence. As Peri considered him, she realized he didn't look too healthy. He was very pale and his eyes were puffy and red, like he'd been crying. All of a sudden, she wanted to cry as well.

Peri reached out and took one of his hands. They were ice-cold. "Do you pray to remember people?"

He looked at her with something not dissimilar to guilt. "No."

"Can you promise me something, then?"

He cocked his head and answered, "Within reason."

Peri whispered on bated breath, "When my time comes, and I leave the TARDIS, will you pray to remember me?"

He smiled, but there was no happiness in it. The stranger's eyes glistened with pearls of crystalline tears. He leant forward and kissed her, feather-lightly, on the forehead. Peri felt his infinite sadness if it were her own.

But he never answered her.

* * *

_On to eternity  
You are not alone_

Gabriel Chase burned.

Flames soared high into the nighttime sky and hide the stars behind curtains of smoke and simmering tendrils of heat. Mortar and brick snapped and popped, wood cracked and fell into piles of dilapidated cinders on the ashy grass. In the windows, the fire splintered the glass and extended its arms out into the chilly air, as if trying to pull the rest of the world down into its boiling depths. The smell was like burnt meat and decay and death.

The girl stared at the inferno with indifference. Tears poured down her face, but she was expressionless as the fire slowly consumed the ancient edifice. Curtains of flame reflected in her grey eyes and turned her tears into dripping rivulets of molten lava tracking down her cheeks. She stood on the boundary of the property in shock, unable to comprehend what she had just done. Unable to comprehend the destruction, and more frighteningly, the pleasure she took in being the cause of it. Horror and sweet vengeance tore her in half, leaving her empty and hollow. She was a shell of a person.

So consumed was she by the rippling bonfire of block and stone that she didn't notice when someone came to stand beside her. The Doctor glanced her way in anguish, but did not disturb the girl.

Then he, too, cast his old eyes to the burning mansion. Like a mighty beast in pain, the structure bellowed as the roof crashed to the ground and the walls caved in. Small sparks of flame jumped from the pyre and licked at the blades of yellow grass, catching but not burning. The house, however, would be completely destroyed before the fire brigade could reach it.

The Doctor clenched and unclenched his fists. He fingered his sonic screwdriver thoughtfully, but knew that it wouldn't help even if he had felt so inclined to intervene. Gabriel Chase had to burn. The ancient evil within it had to be destroyed, as his own past and the girl's future dictated it would. He could hear sirens carried on the wind, but they were too far and too late to do any good. The girl standing beside him was barely on the cusp of her teens, but she already had the haunted look of one who had seen too much. And, as the Doctor knew all too damnably well, she would see much more before her time had run its course. As his own had.

The Doctor wanted to hold her. He wanted to tell her that everything would turn out all right in the end, that she had some manner of a future to look forward to. It would be a lie, of course, but what was one lie amongst the thousands he would thread throughout her life, from Iceworld to Heaven to Paris 1871?

Most of all, he wanted to tell her how terribly sorry he was.

He would ruin her. _Had_ ruined her. He would build her up, and then tear her down. The Doctor looked at the scorched shell of Gabriel Chase, and then he looked at the hollow, skeletal specter of Dorothy McShane, and shed a tear.

"Sometimes, a Time Lord lives too long," he murmured.

The night burned, and the TARDIS flew on into infinity.

* * *

_Trust to the last_

The TARDIS had a habit of materializing to the rhythm of a heartbeat. The trumpet of its arrival was a mechanical whisper that grew louder and more imperious as my chest thudded with excitement, and, if I'm perfectly honest to myself, a generous slice of trepidation. For with the arrival of the TARDIS came an entire new universe of unknowns. Danger and death inevitably followed in the footsteps of the Doctor, despite his best intentions. Malicious twists of fate tangled with the Time Lord's ineffable spirit of adventure and self-righteousness. Good and evil were two sides of the same coin, a coin which the Doctor was always tossing into the air on a whimsy and a pair of crossed fingers. I never knew on which side the coin would land. None of us did: neither Sam nor Compassion and certainly not Anji. Which was why, I suppose, when I heard the TARDIS materialize on the auburn sand in front of my temporary home on the planet Rieridan, my heart-beat echoed the song made by the old police box.

The Doctor had left me at Sorora's home in the middle of Rieridan's largest desert while he took the TARDIS into the capital, in search of some library or other. He had had an unwavering confidence in his ability to pilot the ship on the relatively short hop through space, and had promised to return to me and our host, Sororan, in about 24 local hour's time. So, naturally, he'd been gone almost three weeks.

The arrival of the TARDIS surprised as well as invigorated me. I had grown sick of getting sand up my arse and would murder a ciggy and a half-decent cup of tea. I was going absolutely around-the-twist sitting with Sororan and his inane babbling for the better part of a month while the Doctor traipsed off to who-knows-where without me.

As the TARDIS faded into being, I hoisted myself to my feet and marched straight up to stand nose to nose with the sign that read "Police Public Call Box", ready to give the Doctor a right telling-off. But then the door creaked open, and I stood there facing something, or rather someone, I had not been expecting.

"What in hell . . ." I murmured.

"Fitzgerald Michael Kreiner." The man who stepped from the shadowy interior of the TARDIS was a complete stranger. I was immediately on full alert.

"How do you know my name?! What've you done with the Doctor?!" I demanded in no uncertain terms.

The lanky fella sighed miserably. "Shall we talk?"

And talk we did. He told me that he _was_ the Doctor, one of his future incarnations from a few hundred years down the road. He was the Tenth Doctor. It made a sort of weird sense, once I thought long and hard about it. Me and my Doctor, the one with the long hair and the Victorian gentleman getup, travel in time in the TARDIS, yeah? So theoretically we could meet ourselves at another point in our own timeline, given enough leash.

Christ, I was beginning to sound like the Doctor.

"Isn't this a bit dangerous?" I asked as he finished his explanations. For some reason, I found myself trusting him completely, something only the Doctor could have managed to do in such little time. "I mean, if my Doctor were to see you or somethin', would that crack a hole in the universe or what?"

The Tenth Doctor nodded gravely. "Essentially, yes. I'm taking a big risk by coming back to this point in my life. My eighth self had a lot of things going on round about now. If a single iota of history were to change . . ."

I ogled at him. "Why do it then?"

"Because some things, Fitz," the Tenth Doctor said, "are more important than the laws of time."

"Like what?"

"My friends. My memories."

"Would this be some sort of nostalgia tour of time and space, then?"

"No," he looked at me pointedly, and I felt weird being the center of his gaze, a gaze that had lost none of its potent intensity over two regenerations, "this is my epitaph."

My head reeled in shock and disbelief. I had been expecting a lot of possible answers, and _that_ was not one of them. I breathed incredulously, "You're . . . dead?"

"Dying. 500,000 rads of radiation from a nuclear bolt."

I grunted sarcastically, more to hide my fear than to appear heartless, "That'll do it for sure."

The Tenth-Doctor decided to let the remark pass without comment. He sat in silence and stared into the coppery sky, watching the binary suns set below the dunes. The boiling clouds were streaked with ribbons of gold and scarlet as the sunbeams refracted through the moisture in the atmosphere. The horizon bruised purple as the suns made their final dive behind the head of the largest dune, a small mountain in the distance. The grains of sand caught the dying light and were set aglow like motes of fire in the evening gloom. Long after the last flash of daylight, the auburn sands simmered with the ghosting rays of Rieridan's double sunset.

As night fell, an inconsolable pang of grief resounded within my heart. I didn't have much of a mind for symbolism, but a part of me wondered if this were to be _this_ Doctor's final sunset.

"Is there nothing I can do?" I asked quietly.

The Tenth Doctor sighed, "Nope. I've made my choice, Fitz. And I don't regret it for a moment."

"I don't want to pry, but . . ."

"I am dying because I saved a man's life," he explained, "an old man, a man who had made a silly mistake that would have destroyed him. I didn't have a good reason to do it; he was nobody remotely important."

"I know you don't believe that. Whoever he was, or will be, or whatever, I'm sure he was worth it. A life amounts to nothing unless you're willing to give it up for the most unimportant of people."

"Like you?" There was a twinkle in his eyes, just a hint of affection behind the veils of sorrow.

I hoped, in the darkness, he couldn't see that I was blushing. "Yeah, a useless 'erbert like me. You waited a thousand years to save me from the Faction Paradox, Doctor. That's not something I'm likely to forget, and there aren't enough seconds in the eternity of time and space for me to thank you as much as I would like. Put that in stone, Doctor: you are the man of infinite gratitude and beautiful farewells."

The Doctor did not meet my eye, but I could see the tiny smile on his shadowed face. He leant back into the hot sand and gazed up at the stars in the pristine firmament of an infinitely black sky. They sparkled in his eyes like pinpricks of crystal, hovering in pools of the deepest brown. Those eyes, as I knew all too well, had seen eternity. They had seen demons and monsters and evil that spanned the distance of the ages. They had seen indescribable ecstasy and otherworldly wonders the likes of me could scarcely begin to comprehend. They had seen openings and closings, beginnings and ends, love and war, life and death.

But as he sat with me under the blanket of the heavens, I prayed the Doctor saw just a twinkling of hope.

Because that was the least that incredible man deserved.

* * *

_Farewell farewell farewell_


End file.
